That’s right, there’s a track editor in this game. Multiplayer not only consists of standard matchmaking online play, but also offers a user generated content component. That can help get out the aggression that builds up from playing the game’s main Domination mode. Finally for those who just want to smash things there’s the frag attack, which much like good ol’ Burnout, sets a goal for how many cars you need to frag before time runs out. Personally I think these modes that have proliferated into every racing game need to die in a fire already (I’m really not a fan of drifting for drifting’s sake), but it may catch your fancy. Then there’s a drift mode where you rack up points against a time limit. These tracks are more stunt oriented and can be quite fun to navigate. Next you have your basic time trials where you beat the clock. It focuses on actual racing with no frags, so the boost only gives you speed and the AI seemed far less antagonistic as a result. Notably the Shindo mode was far less stressful. At least if you don’t win you can build up XP through all the destruction and mayhem you create and eventually unlock better cars, but this game really turns into a grind as a result.Īt least there are a few other game modes to enjoy in Ridge Racer Unbounded.
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The only way to secure a win in my experience was to string together a series of frags up to first place, and then try not to screw up the lead. This could have been a lot more fun if it didn’t take the lame ass Mario Kart philosophy of keeping things close. It doesn’t help that there’s no display of your health like there is above the other cars and that it isn’t always obvious what is destructible. I’m all for difficulty, but artificial difficulty thanks to cheating the rules of the game always gores my ox. Worst of all, fragging AI cars imposes nowhere near as much of a time penalty on the AI cars as it does on you. Secondly, the AI basically pulls boost right out of its ass and uses it to pull away from when there is no conceivable way of you doing the same over that stretch of road. First of all the cars you start with are so disadvantaged that the AI has no trouble flying right by you without boosting. This is wonderful and appealing the first couple of times through, but the difficulty level, particularly at the beginning feels extremely cheap. Another option is to take out certain targets like explosive trucks, whose shockwaves can take out multiple nearby competitors at once. Boosting can also allow you to destroy sections of the track in order to create shortcuts, some more effective than others. Once you fill the gauge, you can hit A for a temporary speed increase as well as the chance to “frag” or wreck a competitor by crashing them while boosted. The idea is to build up boost by either drifting through turns, drafting behind other racers, or otherwise destroying things. But that’s about it, as the rest of the game is a blend of FlatOut, Burnout, and Split Second’s crash-centric antics. One thing that this version shares gameplay wise with its Ridge Racer predecessors is the arcadey, floaty physics. Needless to say the “story” is completely inconsequential to what you’re doing here and completely unbounded from logic, which is not a bad thing when you consider attempts like Need for Speed: The Run. Supposedly these races are illegal, though there’s never any law enforcement to break things up or at least add to the tension. Unbounded refers to the street racing scenesters that set the stage for the game, which takes place in the fictional Shatter Bay, appropriately named for all the destruction that regularly takes place as cars wind through the streets, smashing each other and the surrounding facilities to bits.
And just like the typical summer blockbluster, once all the special effects and pyrotechnics wear thin, you start to feel a little cheated when you think about it.
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The result is a flashy title full of wrecks and explosions completely foreign to Ridge Racer up to this point.
Looking to shake things up instead of putting out yet another straightforward pure arcade racer, Namco Bandai brought in the crew most known for the FlatOut series of racers, Bugbear Entertainment. Ridge Racer Unbounded is more of an offshot of the franchise’s roots rather than a true sequel.